PORT ST. LUCIE — Since Lily Zhong entered the City Center scene nearly a year ago with promises to build Port St. Lucie’s first downtown filled with bustling businesses and happy homes, her past has been shrouded in secrecy.

A Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers investigation found that Zhong, who also goes by two other names, has a record of business blunders. The Chinese businesswoman established 18 companies in New Zealand, according to the country’s Companies Office. Fifteen failed and three still are listed on the register, documents show. The folded companies tackled developments on a much smaller scale than the $380 million City Center project.

Zhong bought the foreclosed City Center land by Walton Road and U.S. 1 for $500,000 in 2013 and proposed constructing an international trade center with commercial and residential units on the vacant land surrounding the Civic Center.

Collapsed companies

Zhong’s Winsun Developments Limited was incorporated in 2003 to develop a high-rise apartment building, known as Winsun Heights, in Auckland, New Zealand. The next year, the company borrowed $5 million from a financial firm, Hanover Finance Limited, to build the 14-level, 153-unit apartment complex.

Zhong was able to sell 61 units, but failed to sell the remaining 93 units, which were rented out predominantly to foreign students on a short-term basis. The project cost more than $12 million, according to news reports in The New Zealand Herald.

Lily Zhong(Photo: CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

When the multimillion-dollar loan fell due in 2006, things went rapidly downhill, documents show. Winsun was placed into voluntary liquidation in October 2007. By that time, it owed Hanover $9 million, reports show. The finance firm never collected from Zhong; instead it held the country’s largest mortgagee apartment sale in 2007 on the unsold units. Other creditors were owed a combined total of $687,449, documents show.

The apartment complex was operated by another Zhong entity, Winsun Heights Management Limited, which collected only cash from tenants, liquidator reports revealed. For the period of October 2007 to February 2008, Winsun Developments Limited had only $1,976 cash on hand. Zhong collected bonds to the tune of $43,800 from tenants, but had not paid them to the Residential Tenancies Trust, as required by law, liquidator documents revealed.

Another of Zhong’s New Zealand companies, Winning Investments, was to develop more than 60 apartments over Auckland’s oldest hotel, The Fitzroy, built in 1855. The 2008 plans never came to fruition because the city’s council shot down Zhong’s ideas of building “shoe-box” size apartments, according to reports published by the New Zealand Herald.

That company was dissolved two years later, documents show.

Zhong also tried her hand at selling jewelry, New Zealand Companies Office documents show. Zhong’s Pearl World and Jewellery House Limited was incorporated July 2002, but went into liquidation in 2008. The company consisted of six outlets in the Auckland area. Toward the end, it owed $2.99 million to creditors.

“In the last nine months of operation, the company was unable to pay its rent and/or purchase stock,” a liquidator report stated.

Zhong also was declared bankrupt in New Zealand on July 31, 2008.

Zhong, through her Treasure Coast spokesman, attributed the overseas failures to a declining economy.

“The 2007-2008 financial crisis was devastating to these projects. A significant number of buyers could not finance or close on their loans. The city withdrew the building permit for the site. And, even Hanover, which had promised significant investment, withdrew their funding due to the recession,” Zhong said through Sam Yates of Yates & Associates Public Relations & Marketing.

“Without the funding that was promised and, with the rapid decline in the state of the economy in New Zealand, the project collapsed. I was unable to single-handedly fight the financial crisis.”

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The parking structure at City Center in Port St. Lucie on Sept. 17, 2014.(Photo: XAVIER MASCAREÑAS/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)

Zhong Hard to find

Zhong has been hard to find. Six New Zealand liquidator reports said she could not be reached for interviews.

“The Principal and Manager of the business, Lily Zhong was bankrupted and left the country during that period,” one liquidator report states. “We have been unable to further question her on the financial position of the Company.”

Zhong never filled out a Statement of Affairs for her personal bankruptcy, a secretary at the New Zealand Insolvency and Trustee Service said. That document would have required Zhong to list personal information, including a date of birth.

Different names

Even Zhong’s birth name had been a mystery. Zhong’s full legal name on many liquidator reports is listed as Lin Zhong. She also goes by the name Xiu Rong Lin, according to liquidator documents for Zhong’s Golden City Developments Limited.

“The sole director was Xiu Rong Lin (otherwise known as Lily Zhong), who was also the joint shareholder with Hong Sheng Zhong,” the report read.

A piece of the puzzle could be in place once Zhong meets with city officials to unveil a detailed plan for her City Center development. Zhong has been vacationing in Eastern Europe and France and is to be back in the U.S. next month, Yates said. She will meet with city officials upon her arrival, he said.